Chapter 4:

Early the next day, Two was awoken by a pair of Space Rangers who introduced themselves as Booster and XR. Nos-4-a2 had told her about XR, the short robot Ranger, but Booster was completely unfamiliar to her. He seemed too big from every angle: a mass of scaly red alien with two scraggly ears on top.

"Please come right this way," Booster gestured broadly towards the door of the small room they had fixed Two in. Despite his size, his voice was almost childish in pitch. He seemed nice enough, with a toothy grin and honest eyes, but he was still a Ranger. She couldn't trust him.

XR, on the other hand, didn't have a single feature that Two liked. He was slouched with his arms crossed impatiently across his chest, but what really bothered her was the look in his optics. He didn't seem to be looking at her visor. She tried to casually pull at her cape in an attempt to block his gaze.

"Are we going to see Dr. Animus?" Two asked cautiously.

"Yup," Booster nodded, "but you'll be the only one going in. He likes to keep things private."

The thought of being alone with a strange doctor was unsettling to the probe, but she had hardly gotten a moment of peace since she'd been on Star Command. It was all she could do not to think that things couldn't get worse. She hovered out of the door with Booster and XR following on either side.

Culture shock was a term inadequate to describe what the Earthling robot experienced in the halls of Star Command. No matter where she looked, a myriad of strange creatures clad in green and white were walking about the station. The variety of aliens was so much greater than anything she'd seen before, though she appeared to attract attention as well. Some people stopped to look at her, others snuck glances, and quite a few did double takes as if her simple white frame was the image of a spectre.

The farther they went, the more Two felt that she was lost in a labyrinth with only her escorts to keep her from losing her way. They continued their constant pace for at least five minutes before the corridors became less crowded by the strange variety of aliens and more populated by Little Green Men. There were less wide open bays and offices and more private doors. Booster and XR led the apprehensive Two towards the door that radiated the most importance. It was set apart wider than the rest of the doors and sported a more complex color scheme, throwing a daunting maroon into the mix of white, green, and purple. A gold plaque on the door boasted: "Dr. Animus, Psychiatrist."

"'Psychiatrist?' My mind is in a fine condition," Two complained quietly.

"Sure it is. That must be why you're claiming to be in a relationship with the universe's most dangerous robot criminal," XR scoffed, to which Booster reacted with a reproachful nudge.

Two clenched her fists and narrowed her optics, trying to keep herself from making a scene, "Shut up. You don't know anything."

XR rolled his optics and Booster opened the door in an effort to end their brawl before it began. Two turned away from the robot ranger and began to hover into the dimly lit office, but XR's extended hand on her shoulder kept her in place.

She reacted with disgust, expecting to see an insincere expression on his face, but was surprised by the empathy evident in his circular optics. "Listen, Two... I've been under Nos-4-a2's mind control in the past. If you remember any of this after the LGMs patch you up, we should get together."

Two struck out with the arm that XR had his hand on, sending him across the hall. Booster winced as the short probe huffed into Dr. Animus's office without another word.

"The nerve! That lowlife! What a horrible little—"

"Hello," an accented voice interrupted the probe's swearing.

Two's visor flushed with static. Sitting at a desk on the far side of the room was a green skinned alien with a tall, narrow head and a bushy red unibrow and mustache. A pair of thick spectacles sat on his face between the two scraggles of hair, magnifying his thoughtful expression. A plaque on his desk displayed the same title as the one on his door. Two couldn't help noticing that his uniform was different than the Rangers', though it was still green and purple.

"You must be Miss Two," the Psychiatrist hummed.

"I-I... um... yes," she murmured with chagrin.

"Please don't be nervous. Take a seat and we'll begin," the alien's mustache moved as he spoke. Two briefly wondered why his accent was German when he'd probably never been to Earth, but dismissed it as a coincidence. Nos-4-a2 had a bit of a British accent, after all.

"So what was that little scuffle all about?" Dr. Animus asked.

Two settled onto the sofa across from the alien's desk, frowning with cautious confusion at the doctor's tone. He sounded detached, as if he didn't care about the state of the Ranger she'd just swatted into a wall. His expression was purely analytical. "Nothing. Just a crude can with no respect for a lady's dignity."

Animus cocked one side of his unibrow. "Would you mind elaborating?"

"Yes," Two muttered, "That's not why you wanted to see me today, so why waste time?"

"Hm," the man scribbled a few lines on the stack of papers in front of him, "Right to the point, I see. So I understand you came here with a certain Energy Vampire?"

"Well... I wouldn't say we 'came' here, exactly, but I was with him when the Rangers captured us," Two said with narrowed eyeforms.

"Yes, I see. Were you with him willingly?" the doctor asked.

"Absolutely. I've been staying with Nos-4-a2 for... a while," she said vaguely.

"And how long is 'a while?'"

Two diverted her eyeforms to the floor. She knew that lying wouldn't improve anything, so she told him the truth: "...I've chosen to stay with him for about three years now, but he's had me with him for four."

"Oh? And what about that first year?"

Two thought for a good long minute before responding, remembering when she'd explained the same thing to her sister probe One. It hadn't been an easy conversation, and this was shaping up to be just as awkward.

"I know this isn't going to sound good for us, but when Nos-4-a2 and I first met, he... tried to kill me."

"Please explain."

She sighed inwardly. That was practically all he'd said so far. "He found me on Trade World and tried to control me to take my electricity, but he couldn't. When he made optical contact to wirelessly override my systems, nothing happened. I just tried to shoot at him. Nos is obviously bigger than me and I don't have great aim, so he overpowered me and took me to his ship. He said he wanted to study whatever made me immune to his power so he could overcome it in the future."

Dr. Animus scribbled and scratched away at his paper, taking a bit longer this time. "Ah. And you believe his intentions changed?"

"Yes... once he figured it all out, we had grown to know each other. I guess it was kind of lonely on his ship, and I was the only other free-bodied robot. I asked him once why he didn't want to take my power anymore, but he just said he didn't have the heart..."

Dr. Animus scribbled away at his papers with even more fervor than before, chewing the cap of his pen pensively and reviewing his notes before looking at Two again. He already knew the probe had a defensive temperament, and was worried about how she would react when he asked her the next few questions.

"Hmm... you say Nos-4-a2 'figured it all out.' Do you mean the anomaly that made you immune to his power?" he worded slowly.

Two nodded, "My technology is very different than his, but it's very advanced for the world that I'm from. My coding is complicated. There was no way for him to wirelessly override me."

"And he meant to find a way to overcome it. How do you know that he hasn't been controlling you, or that he hasn't been taking advantage of you ever since?"

Two sat still and silent, gazing out the window, while Dr. Animus waited for her response. Ten tense seconds passed before Two smiled, her speakers emitting a small, warm laugh.

"No, Doctor. It honestly couldn't be that way."

"...Why not?" he asked in perplexion.

"If Nos-4-a2 took my mind after he swore on his life that he wouldn't, that would mean he was still evil. I don't know about you, but I think that anyone who feels true love can't be evil at the same time."

When she looked at her interviewer, his pen was practically burning a hole through his paper. Two shifted on the sofa and wondered if she might have said too much.

"This means that you are in a romantic relationship with the Energy Vampire, despite his past? Do you honestly feel safe to put yourself in that position?"

Two blushed and looked down, nodding her head. She began to hate the critical scritching of his pen, the only noise in that dimly lit room. What could he be writing? Did he believe her, or was he condemning her? He just had to know that she was acting of her own free will. "Please... I don't know what else I can say or do to convince you all that Nos-4-a2 is changed. I just want to see him. If we were together, you'd all see... there's no evil left in him, and there's none in me."

"...Miss Two, I think it's time that you know the real problem of this situation. Your scans came out clean, and the information that you're giving me matches what Nos-4-a2 told us without error."

The blue of Two's eyeforms seemed to flash brighter in her excitement.

"But the real issue does not lie in the present. Nos-4-a2 never paid for his past crimes. In fact, every time he was taken in, he broke out and added more time to his sentence. The way things are looking right now, there is no way that he will be leaving here unless it's on an express flight to PC-7."

Two had started to tremble, slowly shaking her head. "No... there has to be some way! This can't be the end!"

"I'm sorry," Dr. Animus replied, "but there isn't. Even if he has converted from evil to good, our relocation program doesn't allow for villains who committed crimes of such caliber to be released."

"W-wait, a relocation program? For former villains?"

"Yes. There used to be an alias Shiv Katall who would liberate converted lackeys, but when his cover was blown on one of his cases, an underground relocation program was created under the same name. Like I said, though, Nos-4-a2 wouldn't be eligible. Many robots lost their lives because of him."

The short probe recoiled at the doctor's words. Her voice was just a whisper when she told him, "But... he didn't know any better."

Animus readied his pen, "Oh? And how could that be so?"

"It was when we were first becoming friends. He asked me... why I was different. He said I was like him, which didn't make any sense to me. I was pretty mad when he said it, but he actually thought that he was the only robot with sentience. He wasprogrammed to think that. I was the first robot he'd actually gotten to know and he saw that I had my own conscience, but he didn't know how. He thought that when he... killed other robots, that they were just machines. His programming told him that. He didn't believe me when I told him most robots were like us."

Dr. Animus was writing again at the speed of light. Two saw that he was well into his second sheet of paper.

"He did end up believing you, though?"

"Yes. It was one of the scariest things I've ever seen when he finally faced the truth," Two's voice was hushed again. She was remembering the terrible outburst when the seemingly iron-willed Energy Vampire broke down as if all the pain he had ever caused other robots was suddenly bearing down on him.

"Scary?"

Two nodded. "There isn't really anything I can say to explain it. He can't get sick, really, unless it's a virus, but he hardly ate for days. I honestly didn't know if he was going to make it or not. I can't imagine how hard it must have been, as if I found out that every specimen of plant life I've ever scanned was being put through horrible torture. He was only doing what he was built to do."

"Regardless of that, the fact still remains that he is a murderer."

"And I know that he would give anything to change that! I don't think you understand, Dr. Animus, just how hard it is for any robot to defy his or her original directive, especially when it's to realize such a horrible reality. Nos-4-a2 is no villain... that damned Emperor Zurg is. Nos is my hero."

~~~

A/N: You have no idea how long this was sitting in my google drive, collecting dust while I stared menacingly at it and tried to formulate a better way to end it. As you can probably tell, nothing came to me. But still.